ESPN Films "The Real Rocky": New Film Portrays Sylvester Stallone as a Thief

Because all of us have seen Rocky more times than we care to count, it's fair to say that we all know the story.

It's a simple story, really. It's a movie about an obscure boxer from Philadelphia named Rocky Balboa who is down on his luck until heavyweight champ Apollo Creed decides to give a local fighter a shot at the title. Naturally, he picks Rocky.

From there, Rocky picks up a tough new trainer, starts dating his best friend's sister and slowly makes his way towards the big fight. When the fight arrives, Rocky and Apollo go 15 rounds, and Apollo wins via a split decision. It's a victory for Rocky, though, as he got what he wanted out of the fight.

Yup, it's a classic. Apparently, it's also all a big rip-off.

At least, that seems to be the core message of ESPN's new documentary, "The Real Rocky." It's a film about Chuck Wepner, whose life and boxing career supposedly inspired Sylvester Stallone to come up with his Rocky Balboa character.

Those who watched the documentary will know that the events of Rocky closely mirror Wepner's title fight against the great Muhammad Ali in 1975. Just like Rocky against Apollo Creed, Wepner was a huge underdog against Ali, but the two proceeded to go 15 rounds, with Wepner losing by technical knockout.

But that's not the only part of Wepner's life to find its way to the silver screen via Stallone and the Rocky franchise, as a key moment in Rocky III is a direct rip-off of Wepner's fight with Andre the Giant in 1976.

As if that wasn't enough, Stallone would go on to conveniently work bits of Wepner's life into some of his other non-Rocky movies.

Essentially, "The Real Rocky" casts Stallone as a weird kind of identity theft. He took key parts of Wepner's life, put them on paper, put them on the screen and then raked in the cash.

All the while, Stallone downplayed the degree to which Wepner inspired the Rocky films. They were friends for a time, but Wepner eventually filed suit against Stallone, claiming that he deserved some compensation.

Because Stallone's side of the story is not featured in "The Real Rocky," ESPN viewers are pretty much forced to take Wepner's word for it. But because the film cleverly juxtaposes real-life footage of Wepner's boxing exploits with footage from the Rocky movies, it wasn't hard to see that there's more Chuck Wepner in Rocky Balboa than there is Sylvester Stallone.

We also hear plenty from Wepner himself, who is now 72 years old. In the interviews that were conducted, he didn't do much to hide the fact that he feels a little disdain for Stallone, who pretty much took his life and times and used them for profit.

As a longtime fan of sports and sports movies, I found the whole thing to be pretty fascinating. The whole time, I couldn't help but wonder if this is what it would be like if Sean Astin went off and made a movie called Bobby, only to be accosted years later by some guy named Rudy Ruettiger.

In a way, that all of this isn't really coming to light until now is kind of a shame. While the relationship between Wepner and Rocky wasn't kept a secret, it is a lesser-known aspect of the original film, as well as a lesser-known aspect of Stallone's career in general.

After watching "The Real Rocky," the film fan in me is a little on the fence about Stallone. I mean, it was easy enough to be on the fence about him before I knew he was a plagiarizing hack, but now you seriously have to wonder how much credit he deserves for the original Rocky, not to mention the Rocky franchise as a whole.

That's not a good thing for Stallone's legacy, of course. Without the Rocky films, his resume just isn't that impressive.

Well, unless you thought The Expendables was a good flick.